ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUD OF THE “HOLY” LAND

January 2017: My Letter to the Editor of American Atheist Press

To Frank Zindler (Editor, American Atheist Press)

Dear Editor:

Below is an open letter to René Salm regarding his recent book NazarethGate which was edited and published by Frank Zindler. I do not know René’s email address and I hope you will forward it to him. It contains requests concerning a hard-cover edition, which you are perhaps better placed to answer; please let me know the prospects for such an edition.

If there are plans to produce a hard-cover issue of the book I would like to be among its first purchasers — a keepsake to be leather-bound, gilded, and bestowed on my progeny as an heirloom!

I am honored to reproduce for you (below) my letter to American Atheist magazine about that book of yours. I decided to insert the letter rather than attach it because, in this age of nefarious zealots and mischievous pranksters, we are all wary of attachments and parcels!

Finally, if there is a special fund set up for efforts to debunk “holy” hoaxes and fraud, I’d be glad to donate to it. I wish you more grease to your elbows; and please watch your back!

A HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUD & HOAXES IN ISRAEL?

René Salm’s NazarethGate has got to be the most devastating exposé of “scholarly” hoaxes and buncombe I’ve ever seen. The brazen fraud which he has so masterfully stripped naked is absolutely on par with Smith Woodward’s 1912 saga of the Piltdown Ape-Man, and William Summerlin’s hand-painted spots (1974) given as evidence for a genetically altered mouse.

NazarethGate is exceedingly well researched, as it had to be since it takes on the conspiracy of an entrenched clique of camouflaged pseudo-scholars going back centuries.

It may be too soon to ask, but is there yet a rejoinder from those sorry “Nazareth” hoax-forgers?

We may never shake the infinite gullibility of hysterical Jesus-Christ believers: witness the persistent veneration of The Shroud of Turin or a recent “miracle” cited by the Pope for canonizing Mother Teresa: The adequate exposure obtained in photographing her at a somewhat reduced light level is claimed by the Church to reflect a celestial miracle illuminating her piety. And that crap, in spite of the photographer’s testimony that he had boosted the photo-shoot with the latest ultra-fast film from Kodak!

Nevertheless, our true academic archaeologists should not put up with scandalous forgeries such as were unmasked in NazarethGate; the ball is in their court. I ran my career in physical sciences, and I know that in our associations, journals, and bulletins such brazen quacks would never again be permitted to pollute the literature with their foul shit — if you pardon my “French.” Christians (and Muslims) are free to peddle their snake oil on the basis of blind belief. But, unfortunately, they are not content to do just that; they keep trying to harness science to their hocus-pocus. And whenever they try, they get their caveman beards singed.

We shouldn’t have to wait 500 years for a pope to apologize to René Salm — a-la John-Paul II to Galileo. Now’s the time!

Shame on Israel

Unfortunately for the Israeli authorities, too, by employing forgers and appearing to condone (and even endorse) some of their hoaxes, they cast serious doubt on their own archaeological “treasures.” One must now consider an undetermined number of those artifacts to be on par with displays in the creationist museums of the USA.

Linus Thomas-Ogbuji (01/18/17)

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FRAUD OF THE “HOLY” LAND was last modified: July 31st, 2017 by Lyn Thomas-Ogbuji